Old Town Romance
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: Now see Daddy, that's what I've come to talk to you about. (Charlie/Lawson, Western AU)


_So here's something a little outside of my usual brand. A silly, kind of OOC little romance story set in the old west Matthew Lawson as the town sheriff, Charlie Davis suffering from a soap opera illness, as headcanoned by myself and mindyourownussinessblake (on tumblr) Warnings for minor character death (not a main character, mentioned in passing). I was also tired of the conflict in stories being characters sexuality so dont worry, that's not a problem here. Leave a review if you liked it :-)_

…

"Daddy, that's your third drink tonight."

"I know, Charlie."

"Well no more because I wanna have a talk with you."

Charlie took the bottle off the table and put the cap on it, before moving it to the nearby table with other bottles on it. The doctor looked over at him, and then knocked back the last of his drink. He sighed softly, and settled back in his chair. The fire blazed peacefully behind the grate. The homestead slash practice was peaceful at night, Charlie has always found. He sat himself in his usual chair, and looked over at his father with a slight look of expectation.

"Matthew Lawson was around here today."

"I know I let him in."

"Talkin' about marrying you and taking you to live with him at his house."

"Well see Daddy, that's what I came to talk to you about."  
"You knew?"  
"Well I had an idea. I love him, and he's had this look on his face these last few days."

And Charlie had been having the time of his miserable life, hanging around with the town Sheriff. Even if might not be great for his health, Blake had even loosened his grip slightly on him and allowed him to go horse riding for the first time (that his father knew of). He'd thought that his father would be pleased someone wanted to marry him, rather then upset about it.

"Well I knew that. I just didn't think that you would marry him." He sounds almost sad. Charlie let out a soft sigh and put his hand on Blake's knee for a moment, trying to think of the right thing to say and being unable to come up with anything. "I won't be giving my blessing, I can assure you of that."

"Daddy..."

"No, Charlie, my mind is made up." Charlie sighs softly, and he knew it was true. His father rarely changed his mind about things when he was determined.

"Will you at least tell me why?" He demanded, careful not to overstep.

"Because it's not good for you, is why!" He said, folding his arms sternly. "It's not news to you, boy."He said, taking on a caring tone. "You're not well."

"I'm never well." He replied, aware that he sounded like a petulant child. "Surely you of all people would know that."

"I've protected you for your whole life." Lucien told him, with a serious look on his face, "No sheriff is going to convince me to let you risk your health." True: Charlie had spent most of his young life in bed, sick. And a fair portion of his adult life as well, actually. The grip on health he had right now was slim and always in danger of slipping away just as soon as he convinced his father to loosen his grip. It wasn't that Charlie didn't love his father, actually it was the opposite. His father was his closest confidant and always a great defender of those needing defending. But that didn't mean he was always going to make the right choice. He was a parent after all and parents over reacted.

"Don't 'ya think it should be my choice by now? I'm nearly thirty."

"Nearly.' Blake replies, frowning deeply. "No, Charlie." Blake said, firmly. "You are not getting married to him, and you certainly aren't moving out."

"Daddy how long am I gonna live for?"  
"Many years to come."

"You don't know that. You said so yourself that the next time I get sick could be the last time." Charlie wasn't scared of dying, after all: Death has been sitting by his side most of his life. He was scared of never getting to experience all the things in life that he wanted to. "Don't ya think that I should get to spend the time that I have happy?" He asked, giving Blake his best puppy eyes as a last shot. It doesn't work. He possibly deserved that one, using his own mortality as a bargaining chip was kind of a low blow.

"No, Charlie. Go to bed, and I better not hear from anyone that you've hanging around with Matthew Lawson anymore." Charlie looked at him and then turned walking quickly to his room at the back of the house.

Sitting on his bed, he wrapped himself into his nest of blankets, and collapsed sideways onto his pillow, wondering how on earth he was going to convince his father to let him get married, he'd thought he would be happy. Matthew would probably have an idea for it, he decided. He knew that the next day, his father would be going out to the Tyneman Ranch, to see Mrs Beazley who worked up there, like he always did when he was upset Maybe she would be on his side? After all: If he was out of the picture (at least until the next time he was sick) then she could spend more time with him. And God only knows they would both love that.

…

The following day, sitting at his desk Lawson looked up when he heard the little bell attached to the door tinkle. He smiled when he noticed that the person who had strolled in was Charlie, carrying a large picnic basket on his arm.

He looked beautiful. He had the pleasant glow people get when they exercise and despite the previous day, seemed to be in quite a good mood. Matthew Lawson realizes, just then, that he is a fool in love and Charlie Davis-Blake makes him want to write poetry or something like that. That was how full of it the other made him feel. Apparently oblivious to his internal realization, Charlie sets down the basket on his desk and puts his arms around Lawson's neck after he stands and comes around the front. Giving him a chaste kiss on the cheek, Matthew proceeded to assist him to a chair.

"I can stand for more then a few minutes." He complained, tugging the basket onto his lap.

"Well I remember a time when you couldn't." Matthew retorts. He doesn't much like thinking about when Charlie was younger, even when he was twenty, he still remembers the Doctor talking about Charlie being in bed again and worrying about him wasting away.

Charlie brushes the comment off and begins pulling newspaper wrapped sandwiches from his basket.

"Give this one to Bill, it has no cheese on it." He said, passing it. Bill gave a small nod.

"Thank you Mister Davis-Blake."

"You know you can call me Charlie." He said, setting two sandwiches on Lawson's table. "I thought I might pop in and bring the two of you some lunch." He said, cheerfully.

"Does your daddy know that you're bringin' the two of us lunch?" Charlie's smile faltered slightly.

"You know?"

"He was in here this morning wasn't he, kicking up a stink." Bill said, slightly annoyed. "I wanted to put him in the cells to sober up, I thought he must have been drunk, the noise he was making. Yelling about cradle robbers and such."

"Please tell me that you didn't sneak out of the house to come see me?" Not that Matthew didn't trust Charlie not to get caught, God only knows he was a master of hiding things, but if he was found out then there was no hope of them getting married.

"Well Daddy doesn't know. See he's gone out to see Mrs Beazley for the day. Some of the boys up on the ranch she's workin' in been sick lately."

"Is that so?" Matthew asked, taking a bite from his sandwich.

"Apparently. But I didn't book him a job out there on the Tyeneman ranch."

"Bit rude of him to say you can't get married then go off and see his mistress." Charlie sighed.  
"Now we don't know that Matthew. 's just idle gossip." Pause. "Which happens to be true." Matthew smiled and sat back in his chair.

Charlie folded his hands in his lap and sighed softly.  
"Matthew. You are one of the most eligible bachelors in town. If you wanted to go find someone else who isn't sick and whose father wants them to marry then…I won't be offended." Matthew gave him a slightly incredulous look.

"Charlie, there is no amount of anything that would make me not want to marry you anymore."  
"That's good. I didn't really mean that, I was just..You know. Trying to be selfless." Matthew couldn't help but laugh at that, really. Charlie, once you got to know him, did have a sense of humor. Charlie, for what it was worth, looked quite proud of himself. Charlie sighed and put his half a sandwich down in the paper.

"Matthew, what will we do?"  
"Well I could just whisk you away and marry you?"  
"You could do that, but I don't know how that would end up, unless you got work outside this town and I somehow stop being sick."

"Fair enough."

"Will you try talkin' to him again?" Charlie asked. "Maybe Mrs Beazley will say something to change his mind?"

"I will." He agreed, moving so that he could pull Charlie to stand and give him a hug. "Blessing or not, I will marry you, Charlie Davis-Blake. Mark my words." Charlie laughs, and even lets Matthew pick him up for a few seconds, before insisting he go back on the ground.

Matthew even walks him home.

…

He waits until quite late in the evening to return to the doctor's home. The sun has finally made its way across the sky, just beginning to set on the horizon, coating the sky in yellow and blues. It's beautiful, some might say. He knows that Blake will be home by now, even if he could stay overnight at the ranch.

He knocks twice on the door, and offers Charlie a smile when he opens it. Unlike earlier, Charlie has a significantly sadder look on his face, perhaps playing along to his fathers expectations, or maybe he'd been hiding how upset he was from them at the station. It was impossible to tell. He kisses Matthew on the cheek, before looking over his shoulder, accepting the hug around his waist.

"Daddy! The sheriff is here to see you!" Matthew gave him a one armed hug before making his way through to the sitting room where Blake was drinking. He indicated to the chair next to him. Charlie went back into the office, probably to keep working. He could hear the click click click of type writer keys. Taking the invitation, he sat, and poured himself a glass of scotch from the brown glass decanter on the sideboard table. He knew it was for him, since Charlie didn't drink and he couldn't imagine who else would be making an appearance. Unless Jean had suddenly taken up a taste for scotch, of course.

"I always knew someone was going to take Charlie away from me." Blake begins and Matthew has the feeling he's in for a long story. "I just always thought it would be." He gives a sort of gesture at the roof. "Him, rather then you." He settled back in his chair, and took a sip of scotch. The decanter is quite empty. Charlie always said, even when he was a little boy, that if his Daddy wasn't the town doctor then he'd be the town drunk. He takes a sip of his own drink, it burns. Charlie told him once that he didn't mind his father's forbidding him to drink, it tasted like how he imagined bleach would taste and burned his throat.

He had a fair point, but that was how it was meant to taste. When questioned if his daddy knew that he'd sampled his scotch, Charlie had given the cryptic reply of  
"Matthew you could fill a whole book full of things my daddy doesn't know." He wonders a lot about exactly what that book would read.

"Janie Tyneman was eighteen when she left this town. She left around the same time that I did." Blake said, turning to look into the fire. "After they took Mei Lin and Lee, it never even occurred to me that I could have more children." He mused. "We came back around the same time as well. I came back because my father passed away. She came back Janie Davis and eight months pregnant." Lucien mused, "I wonder, if there was meant to be something between us. I think about her a lot, actually. Of course being the only doctor in town I was called on to assist with the birth. He came early, you see. There was no time for a midwife."

He knows this. He was only a deputy then, but he remembers the commotion Janie Tyneman caused this town. Always the black sheep, Janie had left as soon as she could, and only coming back to talk to her brother.

"When he was born, I was holding him, and Patrick said to me, we have to send him away. We have to send him away, and I looked at Janie and I thought that no we don't. Janie has the right to make up her own mind. And she would have. If she lived." Matthew knows all of this. Everyone in town knows all of this.

"Of course, that left us with a living, if sickly baby. He didn't look like he was going to live much longer then his mama, at this point, we hadn't even finished his birth certificate, so I said put me on there, I'll be his daddy." Pause, sip of scotch, "Of course, that caused a stir, didn't it? He was sickly, small and I couldn't bare the thought of this baby not having the short time he had filled with love." He smiled, "I picked out his name, Charles Thomas Davis-Blake. Charles was his mother's choice, she told Patrick that much. He told me. Thomas after my father." Pause, "I wanted him, no matter for how long, to have a father. I told myself, that he would be gone soon and I would go back to looking for Mei Lin and Lee." He said, sipping his drink.

"But he stayed. It was a near thing, of course, but he stayed. He slowly did the things other children did. He walked at eighteen months. I came home one day, and he was there, with Nell as per usual, and he was walking, holding on to the table, before letting go, and running right up to me." He said, smiling. "After that, he started speaking. He used to come right up to me, even if I had patients and say "Up Daddy." And what was I meant to do? Tell him no?" Blake sips his drink, and looks over at him.

"When he was three, when I thought he was over the worst of the sickness, he got sick again. I was sitting with him, one night, and I realized that I wasn't just waiting for God to take him. I wanted him too, and God was here, telling me that he would take him if I wanted him to, and I thought, prayed, rather, just let me have him until he's five. Just two more years." Matthew is very captured by the story now. He knows it all by now, almost as well as he knows his own story, but hearing it from someone else is different.

"When he was five, I asked until he was ten. When he was eleven, and I sat up for three nights in a row, should he leave me in the night, I asked until fifteen, and this kept going right up until he turned twenty five, because every time I he got so sick I thought I might lose him, somehow, asking God gave me hope. He's nearly thirty now, isn't he?" He pours himself another class. "I always tried to keep him close to me, all his life, for the longest time, I thought God did a deal with me, he said, I will take Mei Lin and Lee from you, but I will let you have this boy as payment." He sipped his drink, frowning, "Of course, that was all nonsense, really." He said, "But you knew all of this already." He commented, raising one of his eyebrows.

Matthew nods, trying to be polite about it.  
"Tell me, why should I give you my blessing?"

"Because you love him." Matthew replied. "I love him as well. And we're gonna get married, blessing or not."  
"I thought you might say something like that." He set his glass down. "I spoke with Mrs Beazley up on the Tyneman ranch today, and we had a long talk about love." Blake said, slowly. "Tell me, if he were to get sick again, and we both know he will, will you be able to balance looking after him through those less severe cases at your home?"

"I can."

"If he gets worse, he comes back here, no debate."  
"Of course."

Long pause. Blake is considering. "You have my blessing then." Matthew realized he was beaming all too late

..

Charlie stepped into the office late the following afternoon. Matthew had been busy all day with a local robbery.  
"Daddy?"  
"Charlie."  
"I uh. I wanted to speak with you."  
"Clearly."

"You're not. You're not losing me. I'm just getting married, is all." Blake looked up at him and sighed.  
"I know that. I just...Never expected you to get married."  
"Did you think I was gonna spend my whole life here with you?" He asked, softly.  
"I guess so."  
"I'll still be working for you, so we'll still see each other every day." He said, "Unless you want me to stop."  
"No, I don't...I don't think you should do that."

Charlie stood, and went around to his father's side of the desk, and gave him a hug.  
"I know I don't say it really often, but I do love you, Daddy." Blake hugs him back, arms warm and comforting, just like he remembers they always were. He can't think of a time when he hasn't been able to look to his father for help.

"I love you as well, Charlie." He said, hugging him back. "I just worry, is all."

"I'll be okay. I always am."  
"I know." Blake said, as Charlie released him, going around to sit again. "Who knows. Maybe it'll be good for you." Charlie beams, face splitting into a smile wide enough to break his jaw. Blake even smiles back.


End file.
